50 Book Challenge 2019 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh, and possibly final, thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2019, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here and the sixth one here.

How've you got on this year?

I've only read 15 (I think) from that list but one of them was A Suitable Boy so that must count for something in terms of sheer mass.

I’ve read 39 from that list.

I was surprised to see the Twilight saga included though. They're awful, awful books.

Hi emcla Do join when you’re ready, anytime and however many books you read.

I’ve read 48, have some on my tbr, started and given up some more and no interest in others (Twilight...) but there are some interesting choices on there that I’m not familiar with that I will make a note of.

Hunger Games though? First one was fun but, um 😐 I

Hi emcla, I'm impressed with 60 books this year (as you can see I've not made 50 yet!) Look forward to you joining us in January.

47. Got To Get Theroux This. I really enjoyed this, but I am a Louis Theroux fan, and I think you'd have to like him, and be familiar with his work over the last twenty years, to enjoy it. I listened to it on Audible and it was a bonus to have LT narrate. (It has sent me down a 'Weird Weekends' rabbit hole though as every season plus some of his more hard hitting stuff is available on iPlayer and I'm now working my way through them.) I agree with InMyOwnIdiom that it's a bit Savile heavy, but I'm not sure that the 'residual guilt' defence isn't a bit disingenuous. Yes LT, like hundreds before him, failed to identify JS as a monster, but surely Savile was revisited in a second documentary after his death in large part because it was a ratings winner (and now book seller) and not because LT felt in some way culpable for Savile's MO of widespread sexual abuse. I remember feeling a bit sorry for Jimmy Savile during the original Louis Meets... documentary because I felt Theroux went in a bit heavy on a person that I viewed as a lonely, eccentric, has been, who was desperately clinging on to his 15 minutes of fame. The scene in Savile's mother's bedroom when LT interrogated him on his relationship with 'the Duchess' and in the car where he questioned a bundled up JS about the rumours of him 'not liking' children made me cringe at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, now I, like Theroux himself, wish he'd gone in far harder. Finally one quick question to anyone else who may have read this; Did you feel Louis was intimating that his now wife had,had an affair pre marriage without actually saying so in as many words?

I've read 26 or 27 on that list, depending on whether I've actually read 1984, or just think I have

I quite liked Twilight when they came out although I guess the point of the list is ‘shaping our world’ and they did lead to 50 shades which seemed to change discussions around erotica and it’s acceptability.

Seeing Forever on there reminds me how many times I read that as a teenager too.

I’ve read 25 with another 25ish on my TBR. Sucker for a list.

I’ve only read 25 from the list. Upsettingly, that includes the Twilight books. As an actual adult. And they were so awful and yet I couldn’t stop. (Was staying with sister and nieces, niece had the books, I read them all in about 2 days).

A lot of them I know I’ve read but can’t remember anything about. I’m a pretty terrible reader in that respect, I don’t actually retain much from the books I read. I might be able to say I’ve read a lot of ‘must reads’ (not from that list though) but completely unable to have an intelligent discussion about them.

Watching the episode of His Dark Materials on Sunday highlighted it - I’d loved the books but only remembered the girl was called Lyra, Oxford, some children go missing somehow and the daemons. Nothing else. People on the thread discussing it were able to be really specific about how the adaptation did/didn’t match the book and I was just amazed they could remember so much detail. I mean it’s years and years since I read the book, but even if it was last month I’d probably have been the same.

HI emcla, come on and post!

I think I've read a 32 but a bit vague on some, eg. I read loads of Wodehouse in my late teens, including at least some Psmith books, but Psmith, Journalist? Can't say for sure. Books that shaped our world might be over-egging it a bit, but I appreciate the wide spread. Lots of Irish books, which is vaguely pleasing even though I haven't read them.

I couldn't get into the His Dark Materials books at all. Bored by the endless banging on about daemons - it felt like someone wanting to tell me all about the really cool dreams they'd been having.

43 on that list, I think. And a few others started but not finished. Somewhat surprised by some of them. I don't think The Children of Men is particularly representative of P D James' output, for example.

I gave my favourite nephew His Dark Materials as a gift without reading them when he was about 10 or so. I read them myself a few years later and was horrified at giving them to him so young with the central theme. We chatted about them and thankfully he hadn't picked up on half the stuff I had. I've never given a child a book without knowing more about it since.

I've read about 30 on the BBC list with quite a few lined up. I need to get more literature/worthy books in my total next year.

138. *Terra Incognita - Ruth Downie
     Second in her Roman doctor solves murders series. It was ok as a trash read.

139. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
     A family undertake a journey to bury the mother in her home town in Mississippi some 40 miles away by cart. Narrated by several members of the family as they journey with the rotting corpse.

I have no idea what to make of this. Almost comic in places this is very dark and profound. I can't say I enjoyed it, but I won't forget it in a hurry.

140. The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates A slave escapes his bondage and then joins the underground railroad to help others escape.

I'm probably a bad person for saying this but this was really tedious and dragged on. I only finished it because I had invested so much time in it. Very slow moving and not particularly interesting.

I found that an irritating list. You know when you haven't read the actual book named, but have read others by the same author, and want some credit for them? (Or is that just me?!) This seemed to be a particularly frequent occurrence with this list!

Eg I've read several Dickens but not Our Mutual Friend, ditto Atwood / Greene / Woolf, how on earth can L.M Montgomery be there for Emily of New Moon rather than Anne of Green Gables, did Anne Bronte really shape our world more than Charlotte or Emily, etc.

Humph. Anyway I'm on 30 ish. Can I have half a mark for the ones above? Pleeeease??

My total's 34 from that list and more if they're counting all of the Tales of the City books. I'm a bit surprised really as I don't usually score very well on list-type things.

Came back on to note 74: Big Sky - Kate Atkinson

Loved this. Inhaled it in a day or so. It seems a long time since we last met Jackson Brodie and, although I've read all the books in the series, I've more or less totally forgotten the previous plots, so the peripheral characters who reappear here were just vague memories. The storyline is undeniably grim but KA manages a difficult balancing act to make this simultaneously funny and redemptive - and not as melancholy as previous outings, I felt. I do hope there'll be more.

Yes, Tara, I graciously permit you half-marks for the above.

Oops, I accidentally posted my latest reads on the old thread! List, with new additions:

1. The Cactus by Sarah Haywood
2. The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths
3. The Humans by Matt Haig
4. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
5. Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman
6. Now You See Her by Heidi Perks
7. When All is Said by Anne Griffin
8. My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher
9. The Taking of Annie Thorne by CJ Tudor

10. Milkman by Anna Burns 11. The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley 12. Normal People by Sally Rooney 13. Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield 14. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwate 15. Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls 16. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert 17. Melmoth by Sarah Perry

18. In Pieces by Sally Field: I liked this memoir, though I will say I'm not generally a big memoir person. It was very honest: she was very open about her own faults and mistakes, as well as outlining some of the terrible, awful things that happened to her in her childhood and early career. It was interesting the choices she made in terms of what she gave space to in the book. There wasn't much on her later life, and I would have liked to hear more specifically about her experiences of motherhood in the light of what she outlines about her own mother and her upbringing in general. But despite the trauma, it was a gentle read.

19. The Familiars by Stacey Halls. The cover of this drew me in, as well my current passion for historical fiction. This is about the Pendle witches, but told from the perspective of Fleetwood Shuttleworth, the wealthy seventeen year old mistress of Gawthorpe, one of the largest estates in Lancashire. She is pregnant, and having suffered a number of miscarriages and losses, believes she is likely to die during this pregnancy; she takes on as her midwife a young local woman, Alice Gray, who is later accused of witchcraft, and Fleetwood battles to exonerate her. I thought this was only ok. Halls did a good job of the historical details, but I found Fleetwood an irritating narrator, and I would have preferred to know more about the women accused of witchcraft themselves. There was a little bit too much overt grandstanding about the ideological context for the witchhunts (changing position of women etc). She was also kind of going for ambivalence about the supernatural element, which didn't quite pay off. The ending was...spectacularly bad.

20. Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry. Two Irish gangsters wait in a ferry terminal in Spain for the estranged daughter of one, who they've heard will either arrive from or depart to Morocco that night. While they wait, they reflect on what has led them to this point. I liked this a lot, but I like Barry's writing. It's quite coarse, and also very 'literary' (long shadows of Beckett here), but beautiful as well. Maybe a bit too much angry sex, to be honest. A little bit repetitive in places, though - I get that writers have recurring themes in their work, but recurring sentences and descriptions is maybe pushing it a bit.

I've only read 31 of that list. Oh well.

Thanks biblio!

In that case it's a good list

Feel free to seek my permission any time.

I’ve only read 14 from that list but like Tarahumara I’ve read others by some of the authors but not the specific book. I’ve got quite a few on my TBR pile too!

Interesting list. I've only read 19 of the actual books mentioned. With a further 17 if we include authors but not the actual books specified :) Dickens, Steinbeck, Orwell, Woolf, Greene, PDJames, LMMontgomery etc etc.

tara yes agree Our Mutual Friend one of the few Dickens I haven’t yet read

Fortuna think His Dark Materials absolutely fine for a 10 year old, my niece was 10/11 when I gave them to her and she loved them. Maybe I’m forgetting something!

Satsuki it was the children having their souls cut off that horrified me. He didn't see it like that thankfully. I miss him being little as he was a voracious reader and his birthday often fell in with a new Harry Potter being released which I used to pre-order for him. He'd call me every day until he'd finished it to tell me where he was up to and what he thought. I miss our chats about HP and A Series of Unfortunate Events and the like.

Tara I feel exactly the same about these lists and agree there should be credit for the author, especially when they don't pick the one I've read their best book.

Hello - can I join? I appreciate I'm very very late to the party though . I put my 2019 list together from my 'read' books filter on Kindle, and some are audio books as well.

I'm majorly impressed at the posters reaching 200+ books - it's made me want to ditch the TV, my job and my husband in order to join in

1. The fireman; Joe Hill
2. Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine; Gail Honeyman
3. The Tattooist of Auschwitz; Heather Morris
4. We should all be feminists; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. Running like a girl; Alexandra Heminsley
6. Finding Gobi; Dion Leonard
7. Everybody died, so I got a dog; Emily Dean
8. Remember me; Sophie Kinsella
9. The break; Marian Keyes

10. Breathing lessons; Anne Tyler 11. I'm a stranger here myself; Bill Bryson 12. A walk in the woods; Bill Bryson 13. Notes from a small island; Bill Bryson 14. The heart's invisible furies; John Boyne 15. Edward adrift; Craig Lancaster 16. Nine perfect strangers; Liane Moriarty 17. Everything that remains; Joshua Fields Millburn 18. Everything I never told you; Celeste Ng 19. Little fires everywhere; Celeste Ng 20. The sealwoman's gift; Sally Magnusson 21. The stone man; Luke Smithherd 22. In the darkness, that's where I'll find you; Luke Smitherd 23. Kill someone; Luke Smitherd 24. A head full of knives; Luke Smitherd 25. 11.22.63; Stephen King 26. Rose Madder; Stephen King 27. The Stand; Stephen King 28. The end of the world running club; Adrian J Walker 29. From the storm; Adrian J Walker 30. How not to be a boy; Robert Webb 31. Screw it, let's do it; Richard Branson 32. The martian: Andy Weir 33. The beach cafe; Lucy Diamond 34. My sweet revenge; Jane Fallon 35. Having a lovely time; Jenny Eclair 36. Moving; Jenny Eclair 37. Sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come; Jessica Pan 38. The unexpected joy of being sober; Catherine Gray 39. The unexpected joy of being single; Catherine Gray 40. Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone; JK Rowling 41. Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets; JK Rowling 42. Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking; Susan Cain 43. The 4 pillar plan; Dr Rangan Chatterjee 44. The stress solution; Dr Rangan Chatterjee 45. Happy Ever After: escaping the myth of three perfect life; Paul Dolan 46. 10% human: how your body's microbes hold the key to health and happiness; Alanna Colman 47. Gut: the inside story of our body's moist underrated organ; Giula Enters 48. The omnivore's dilemma; Michael Pollen 49. The diet myth: the real science behind what we eat; Tim Spector 50. The psychobiotic revolution: the new science of the gut-brain connection; Scott Anderson, John Cryan, Ted Dinan 51. Reset; David Sawyer 52. The gift of fear; Gavin de Becker 53. Food rules; Michael Pollen 54. In defence of food; Michael Pollen 55. The way we eat now; Bee Wilson 56. The clever guts diet, Michael Mosley 57. In a dark dark wood; Ruth Were 58. Time and time again; Ben Elton 59. Life, death and vanilla slices; Jenny Eclair

A bit of an odd mix of books this year with some non-fiction (I got interested in gut microbes this year ) and I had a rough year so I turned to easy fiction such as Sophie Kinsella-type books and old favourite re-reads like Bill Bryson, Stephen King and Harry Potter (on audio). My favourite is always 11.22.63, which I've read and listened to around 10 times now and is like an old friend; also The Stand.

Stand outs were John Boyne (I've just started on another of his - A ladder to the sky) and I also unexpectedly really enjoyed the sealwoman's gift - a fiction book but based on a real event of pirates abducting people from an Icelandic island in the 1600s.

Not so great was the unexpected joy of being single - I'm not single, but I bought it having thoroughly enjoyed her first book on being sober (I'm not an alcoholic either, but it was so well written and honest, I was keen to read her next book). It felt like it was rushed out to cash in on the success of the first book though.

I only achieved a paltry 11 from the BBC list Although thanks to this thread and the recommendations, many of the others are on my TBR pile.

Course you can, Fran. I'm oddly partial to books about the microbiome too. It's always good if you can put your favourites in bold for those of us who like to mentally bookmark future reads! I agree that the Unexpected Joy of Being Single was unexpectedly joyless.